Motion powered battery
Contents
Overview
For our engineering design project, we will be creating a motion powered battery. While there are some of these on the market with various designs, our motion powered battery will utilize the model of a shake flashlight. Ideally, we will be able to generate enough stored power to charge an electronic device (i.e. a phone) for a substantial amount of time.
Our three person team will design and build a magnet charging device that uses magnetic forces to generate an electrical current through a wire. We will be using an Arduino to measure the power output and determine if there is a need for a capacitor/resistor. Once the battery is charged, we hope to build power output terminals from the battery so that we can use it to power other things.
Team Members
- Katherine Laue
- Steven Schlau
- Henry Roberts
- John Fordice(TA)
- Denise Mell(Instructor)
Primary Goals
- Be able to generate power through the tubular magnetic set up
- Measure output with Arduino
- Connect any necessary components to control the power output before connecting batter
- Connect battery to the tubular setup and be able to charge battery
Secondary Goals
Design
Challenges
- Our main challenge is more of a potential issue with the overall motion powered set up. Most motion powered devices only require small power outputs such as crank or shake flashlights. Existing motion powered devices such as AMPY's Move need vigorous movements such as running to generate power in a reasonable time span. Our device may need to be shaken very hard or for a long period of time to generate enough current and electrical energy to a) charge the battery even a little and b) generate enough charge in the battery to use it to power other devices.
- Once we have built our design, we hope to refine it to make it smaller. This could be a potential challenge as we will want to still generate a similar power output but have a smaller design that could be more attractive to a consumer.
- If we can make the design smaller so we could fit more than one tube into the overall encasing, we would have to make sure that the magnets and the charges do not interfere with each other.
Materials Needed
- PVC pipe - [link] -$2.00
- Teflon - [link] - $5.99
- Neodymium magnet [link] -$15.00
- Capacitor [link] -$15.00
- Resistor [link] -$8.00
- Wire [link] - $5.00
- Electrical tape [link] -$2.50
- Rechargeable battery [link] -$25.00
TOTAL: <$100.00
Gantt Chart
